Sports Illustrated - USA (2022-06)

31 JUNE 2022

report from the Pew Research Center, men are

more likely than women to say funding should

be based on the amount of money brought in by

the team (30% vs. 14%, respectively). Even now,

says Ware, often when she discusses Title IX

compliance, it’s presented like a zero-sum game:

“If women win, then men lose. And Title IX gets

blamed for everything, especially in the athletic

department when there are hard choices that

need to be made.”

When Title IX was passed, even high-level

intercollegiate sports were often niche and

regionally popular. Today, college sports are a

multibillion-dollar fixture of the national sports

entertainment industry—and a source of com-

plaints about excess commercialization, abuse

of an unpaid labor force and of academic insti-

tutions allowing a cash spigot to take them far

away from their educational mission.

Here, too, Title IX plays a role. The legal

requirement to field women’s teams gives univer-

sities cover for the commercialization of football

and other men’s programs. In some cases, the

law “has provided a shield of the ratcheting up

of making money to subsidize other sports,” says

Victoria Jackson, a historian at Arizona State and

former professional runner.

As college athletes have won the right to be

paid through name, image and likeness deals,

one thing that’s become clear is women’s teams

may be worth more than we’ve been led to

believe. How else do you explain women’s col-

lege basketball ranking second in NIL deals,

behind football, according to a study by NIL

company Opendorse?

Even if athletic budgets at every

school in the nation was equal for

men and women, there still wouldn’t

be true equal access. High schools in

this country are still largely racially

segregated, and those with majority

students of color have fewer resources

and sports teams. Even at majority-

white schools, girls typically have only

82% of the sports opportunities that

boys have; at schools where students

of color make up the majority, that

number drops to 67%, according to the

National Women’s Law Center.

A

1973 ARTICLE in this
magazine detailed the
vast inequities faced by
women athletes. In some
ways, it sounds like ancient history:
A 1969 Syracuse school budget ear-
marked $90,000 for boys sports and
$200 for girls.
The article goes on to describe an
account from LPGA golfer Jo Ann Prentice, on the gossip about her
sex life: “The vicious paradox that Prentice outlines—women athletes
are either heterosexual wantons or homosexual perverts or, simulta-
neously, both—is the culmination of all the jokes and warnings that
began when an 11-year-old wanted to play sandlot football with her
brother and was teased, in good fun, about being a tomboy.”
While progress in funding for women’s athletic programs is easy to
gauge, more difficult are those attitudes toward women athletes: the
old, offensive stereotypes holding that they must be unnatural in some
way and are certainly not to be deified in the same way we do men.
In professional sports, this tension plays out constantly. The U.S.
women’s national soccer team took its own employer to court over
equal pay, reaching a settlement in 2022 after years of wrangling. The
WNBA prohibits charter f lights to away games. And the NWSL has
been embroiled in controversy over widespread allegations of abuse,
harassment and low pay.
In the college basketball ranks, it took Sedona Prince’s now infamous
TikTok video to expose the inequities in the facilities. Nearly 50 years
after Nelson’s team at Stanford was denied access to the weight room,
the treatment was essentially the same. But this time, people cared.
Though not universal, maybe it’s these shifts in how women are
viewed that are the truly celebratory results of Title IX. Women can
be record breakers, broadcasters and coaches. Women’s teams can
make money. Women deserve respect no matter what they choose
to study, teach or play, or whether they’re gay, straight, bi or trans.
Title IX has never been and never will be just about sports. But
women’s sports have never been just about sports, either. As anyone
DA who’s played or watched knows—it’s about a whole lot more.

VID

E.
KL

UT
HO

WHEN

STANFORD

LOSES,

FRIENDS ASK

WHETHER

NELSON

IS UPSET.

“HECK NO,”

SHE SAYS.

“WOMEN’S

BASKETBALL

ITSELF

IS WINNING.

THAT’S WHAT

I’M ROOTING

FOR.”

5

TI 0

TL

E^